How to Optimize Remote OLE Automation Performance

• Enterprise Edition of Microsoft Visual Basic for Windows, 32-bit only, version 4.0

SUMMARY

Remote OLE Automation involves cross-machine calls across a network, which can really slow things down, so it is important to keep a few things in mind while making such remote calls. This article lists the ways in which you could optimize the performance of your remote calls.

MORE INFORMATION

First, always use Early Binding. This reduces the number of calls between objects by about 50%. This can make a big performance difference when remoting objects (especially over RAS). The only time you should use late binding is if you do not know ahead of time what the object is that you will be connecting to.

Second, when calling methods on objects, create a method that accepts 'n' number of parameters than exposing 'n' properties on the object, setting each, and then calling the method. This is faster because the OLE call is the more expensive part in terms of execution time. Passing relatively large amounts of data within the call works well. The one limitation to keep in mind while doing this is that if you are using a 16-bit object, you can't pass more than 64k of data at one time.